The Indonesian financial market is undergoing a sea change as droves of millennials and Gen Z cohorts are becoming first-time investors.
The total number of investors in the country’s capital market has doubled since Jan 2020 as the social and economic restrictions triggered by COVID-19 have shifted the allocation of savings and discretionary spending to securitised assets.
Homegrown wealthtech company Stockbit is among the first movers to have benefitted from the shift. After starting off in 2016 as a platform for stock traders to exchange information and trade, Stockbit diversified into mutual fund retailing in 2019 after acquiring the mutual fund app Bibit.
As of today, Bibit, which is separate from Stockbit’s stock trading app, has emerged as one of the highest-rated investment apps on Android with over 500,000 downloads.
Bibit received capital boost in May when a group of investors, led by Sequoia Capital India and EV Growth, invested $65 million. The capital injection brings Stockbit’s total funding to $114.2 million, the largest among Indonesia’s wealthtech firms, to date.
Despite the remarkable growth during the pandemic, capital market penetration in Indonesia still has a long way to go, said Stockbit co-founder and Bibit CEO Sigit Kouwagam.
“In the aggregate, only 2% of Indonesians have participated in the capital market so far. As Indonesia is still at the beginning of the democratisation of access to wealth management products, there’s still a lot of room for growth,” said Kouwagam, who was among the wealthtech industry leaders interviewed for our latest report The State of Wealthtech in Indonesia.
To read more about the state of Indonesia’s wealthtech industry, refer to our latest Data Vantage report. If you are a premium news subscriber, upgrade your subscription to include DealStreetAsia’s Data Vantage to access our entire set of reports, data-led stories, and deal monitors. Our Data Vantage subscribers will also get access to our database of company financials and cap tables based on ACRA filings. Still not sure? Opt for a one-month trial of Data Vantage for $299.
Edited excerpts of the interview with Kouwagam:
